“Art Is Good?” Not Much Of An Argument For Art Is It?

I suggested in a post this week that, based on the lack of any arts business before the 114th US Congress, that it appears that lobbying for the arts seems to be failing. Yes, the NEA/NEH budgets have stayed more or less stable for the past few years, but the almost complete lack of any action on policy related to the arts suggests the arts have no place in a national agenda. And I suggested that perhaps this is so because our priority seems to be more about getting funding than it is proposing a vision for the arts that would justify that funding.

Fellow AJ-blogger Michael Rushton disagrees and wrote in response to my post that perhaps that’s a good thing:

I am going to urge caution on the vision thing. Because aside from “art is good”, reasonable people can differ on what that vision ought to be. A much bigger role for the NEA? OK, but what would that do to support for state and local arts councils, or to philanthropic support? More funding for arts education? Maybe, but what do we mean by “arts education”, and what is it that would be sacrificed in otherwise highly pressed public schools to facilitate it? Copyright reform? Well, would that be to increase access to works, or to increase protections and compensation for copyright holders?

What problem do we want to solve that a larger vision would be of value?

Have you seen some of the decisions made in Congress over the past few years? Do you want it to take a bigger role in proclaiming a vision for the arts?

Arts policy in the US is pretty much a matter of “muddling through“. I’m not convinced that this is the worst thing in the world, in a big diverse country with a great variety of ideas for what to support in the arts. Let cities and states experiment with different initiatives in the arts and arts education, learn from what seems to have worked, and let the NEA try a few new things too (with some rigorous policy evaluation to check on the performance of the new programs). This isn’t a place where we need grand visions for the arts.

With all due respect, I think that Michael has articulated the problem exactly. And that’s the problem. Essentially he’s arguing that we should be intentionally vague with “art is good” so that we don’t get into debates. He suggests that even arguing for a bigger role for the NEA, expanded funding for arts education, or reform of copyright laws are slippery slopes that will founder the ship on trying to define details. And he adds a “let sleeping dogs lie” caution that it’s actually preferable to be under the radar of Congress because if their attention is aroused they’ll muck around in ways we might not like.

I get it. The last time Congress paid attention, Jesse Helms was stirring up all sorts of trouble and the NEA had to fight for its very existence.

But here’s the problem. If the arts want to have a meaningful place in American culture, they have to lead. It’s no longer obvious to most people – yes, most – that the “arts are good.” We don’t need government for the arts to succeed, but on a range of public policy and arts-specific issues, the arts need advocacy or policy will be set in ways that do not favor the arts.

Copyright for example. The DMCA is a disaster for artists. You know that non-arts lobbyists are arguing for copyright reform and that what they’re arguing for will likely not be in the interests of the arts (if recent experience is any guide). How about communications policy – cable regulation, social media platform censorship, net neutrality? Artists have a stake in all these issues. How about community development? That’s an arts issue. Diversity? Again arts. Why are the arts good? Why should we invest in them?

The problem with sticking to the “arts are good” argument is that it’s essentially an appeal to altruism and it’s a weak one. The “arts are good/arts education is good” argument is a conservation argument. That is – it tries to conserve what it has. The problem with it is that the best it can do is not lose too much. An entrepreneurial argument, on the other hand, sees possibility and opportunity. It attracts adherents and expands.

As long as the arts lay low hoping not to attract too much Congressional attention they’re never going to be anything bigger. As long as the argument for the arts is just about conserving NEA/NEH budgets, it’s not going to inspire anyone. As long as it doesn’t inspire anyone, the arts aren’t going to be central to American life. Or get more funding. Maybe that’s okay. But then why pretend to lobby? Why pretend the arts are important if you can’t articulate why?

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Comments

As usual, you are asking the challenging important questions. I think this one is huge. So much hangs in the balance…..

The reality of our situation is that we do need to lobby, and the reality of lobbying is that we do need to articulate values. And the easiest way to locate value seems to be what things are good for, the instrumental role they play. But the interesting thing is that for the arts to be means to further ends, those ends have to stand on their own. What we have traded out when we argue the arts are beneficial is that we no longer grant them the status of ends. And yet, everything the arts are good for does not suffer the same scrutiny. Is the economy good? We suppose it is, but articulating why never ends up being a question. So the real problem for us is that the arts are in the position of being questioned and we are convinced the only way to find their value is by having a handle on how it is articulated.

But as in the case of the economy, and in fact EVERYTHING that gets treated as an end in itself, articulation is not only unnecessary but counter productive. That is probably why it seems a good thing to leave the question of “art is good” vague. The reality is that ALL things we treat as good in themselves are BY DEFINITION unquestioned. Their value does not depend on them being subject to articulation. By being accepted as the fulcrum of our actions they are the things (like appealing to the economy) that grant our instrumental doings their value.

The trick is how we get to place things at the center of value, and you are right to point out that in this regard we have lost our way in the arts. When you ask “Why pretend the arts are important if you can’t articulate why?” that only becomes an issue if you are trying to talk to people who don’t get it. THAT is the point about which this issue turns. If you question a child why drawing with crayons was important, what would she possibly say that could matter? The point is that it IS important, and articulating that importance is beside the point. You don’t need to know why you do it, just that you do. That it is important, not why it is.

This is the confusion we have with values. We feel that they need to be explained in some way, but it turns out that only means need to be explained, not ends. Instrumentality has an explanation built into it, but intrinsic things do not. And it seems we fear letting go of our ability to explain things. As if we suffered vertigo admitting that things can be important to us with no further justification. We are so committed to offering justifications that we fail to see the measures with which we do our measuring. No one asks whether the measure itself is justified. Not often, at least. The things we accept at the center of our judgments are the logical equipment we interrogate the world with, and our focus is entirely on the empirical results.

The simple truth is that we do not understand how values function in our lives and have little clue what diverse roles they play in our everyday operations. Until we sort that out we will keep getting stuck in cul de sacs and running off in backwards directions. Want to make progress understanding the value of the arts? First we need to understand how value works in human lives. This is as much a question about ‘value’ as it is about ‘art’.

I have been saying publicly, loudly and often for seven years now that arts advocacy in the US is terrible. Given the size and diversity of our creative economy, that’s shocking, yes, but ironic. After all, we’re artistic and creative in incredible ways, except when it comes to ensuring the very future and existence of our artists and creatives.

What we have here is a stark philosophical contrast: you, Doug, imagine more central planning as a kind of panacea, while Michael is skeptical of it. You could argue that Michael’s political rationale is rooted in fear, but I would argue that it’s merely pragmatic. Indeed, when one of our two main candidates for president is a morally and intellectually corrupt and unhinged racist, sexist and anti-Semitic proto-nationalist, doesn’t this whole topic feel a bit — well — oblivious, luxurious, precious?

To argue that the “last time Congress paid attention, Jesse Helms was stirring up all sorts of trouble and the NEA had to fight for its very existence” is also misleading. We do have more recent and, I would argue, more brutal examples to point to. So let us now snap out of our collective amnesia and recall what happened at the top of the Obama administration. First, there was a months-long battle with the right-wing over a proposed one-time infusion of a measly $50M in additional NEA funding. The administration won that fight, yes, but at a cost — some would say a needless one, given the dire fiscal circumstances that greeted President Obama in January 2009. Then there was the supply/demand controversy ignited by Rocco Landesman. He was not only right (if tactless) in his observations, but the ensuing fulminations within the arts community exposed it as the inchoate patchwork of self-interested parties that it is. Then there was the months-long, and downright hysterical, right-wing meltdown when the Obama administration supposedly attempted to use the NEA to advance the White House’s political agenda — a trumped-up canard that nevertheless helped to catapult the late, horrible Andrew Breitbart to the front lines of conspiracy theorists and cost Yosi Sargant his job as the NEA’s communications director.

So this isn’t about whether our Congress would or would not act in a way that we might or might not like. The right-wing wants the NEA dead. So long as US arts advocacy remains mired in lame approaches and boring 20th century tropes, their view of public arts funding, let alone the creation of a national arts agenda, will remain unchanged, unswerving and unstinting.

We, as a nation, are too immature, polarized, ignorant and, at the present time, consumed by a cold and throbbing civil war to remotely hope for a national, rational arts policy. And it sure won’t happen until and unless there is a real demand for it, which means a massive, sustained mobilization of people — not just you, me or Michael. How often has my simple idea — a Million Artist March on Washington — been literally LOL’d out of a room, sometimes by some of the most powerful movers, shapers and thinkers in our corner of the world? What does that tell you?

We get the arts ecology we deserve — the one we’re willing to fight for. And we’re not willing to fight.

Leonard: Far from a panacea or central planning, I think I am arguing for something far messier and and complicated. Much as I appreciate what the NEA does, I wonder if in fact the NEA hasn’t become a distraction in arguing for the arts. When the NRA lobbies, it’s not asking for funding, it’s arguing for an idea. The fact that that idea feeds a lucrative industry of weapons manufacturers gives that idea constituent funding and political clout. The NRA could make the argument that gun rights are guaranteed in the constitution so you, government, should fund us to protect those rights. But that would be laughable and if they did get government funding – say in the Interior Department budget (NEA irony intended) – they would cripple themselves politically.

Instead, the NRA bombastically argues for its interests, even when it would seem most Americans would be opposed (see NRA public comments after Sandy Hook). And it wields power. The arts, by contrast, are consumed by arguing for relatively small amounts of money which are surely nowhere near enough to effect the kinds of rational arts policies many of us would like to see. Look at the examples you cite for Congressional arts fights. These are distractions – an extra $50 million? Does anyone remember for what? The right usually casts the NEA as a kind of charity for entitled artists, a payoff. In reality, the NEA expands access and encourages diversity and inclusion. An argument for funding because “art is good” is an argument for handouts. An argument for access and diversity is an argument for social justice.

As long as arts funding is characterized by opponents as a handout, the argument is lost before it begins. The country runs on subsidies and incentives throughout virtually every sector of the economy. Handouts. Of course it’s politically useful to use arts subsidies as a political weapon and they won’t stop as long as it works. My question is why give them the argument if they’re guaranteed to win? No Million-Artist March will change anything if their core political issue is theatre against “handouts” they don’t like.

Here we agree. The NEA has been a distraction since Jesse Helms and I would make a strenuous, unabashed argument for getting government out of the arts-funding business entirely. Working in public arts funding myself, I do not believe it is possible, in theory or practice, to shield public arts funding from politics. That it could be shielded from politics in our current atmosphere, especially, is delusional.

Since we live in the world we live in and not the one we want to live in, I think your viewpoint on NEA’s lobbying efforts needs some gentle correction. Government agencies don’t lobby in the strict and legal sense of the term. They can and do use various platforms to advocate for what it does, and in our proudly dysfunctional system, one of the primary goals of government is to look for ways to justify and therefore perpetuate itself — regardless, I might add, of whether the services it provides are the very best ways to serve the people.

I agree that the NEA argues for an idea, but, with respect, I defy you tell me, succinctly and confidently, what that idea is. That we should fund the arts with taxpayer dollars? That arts matter? That art, as Rocco suggested, works? I’m not convinced that those are ideas. Well, maybe. They seem clumsy and desperate to me. And, more to the point, have they changed very much in the eyes of most of the population? I would say no, not at all, and I think you would have to agree with that. Let’s take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. If the justification of the NEA is to argue for an idea that’s we can’t define particularly well and is not particularly effective, then what’s the use of it? (More on this in a moment.)

The comparison to the NRA is good but flawed. As a matter of legality and tax code, the NRA is a nonprofit organization which, as a 501(c)(4), not a 501(c)(3), is permitted to advocate — that is, lobby — for its mission, and clearly that’s just what it does. Publicly funded federal agencies cannot lobby. That’s not to say, again, that they can’t and don’t rah-rah for what they do, but how they do it makes all the difference.

Your statement about the right—that it “casts the NEA as a kind of charity for entitled artists, a payoff”—was certainly true pre-Obama. Today, though, they’d go much further, with more hysterics and more conspiracy theories and more dog whistles and more factually dubious mouth-frothing. Yes, the NEA expands access and encourages diversity and inclusion. So—pardon me—what? That makes them more noble or effective or indispensable than, say, the Ford Foundation? A lot of thoughtful people who aren’t reactionary bigots might respond that expanding access and encouraging diversity and inclusion, yes, is a catalyzing goal, but it’s not the only urgent need of the arts and that, in any event, making expanding access and encouraging diversity and inclusion the centerpiece of its existence has not persuaded many non-believers..

Here’s my take on the “handout” canard. The right understands how nonprofits work. Certainly, in the case of the proto-fascist on the November ballot, they know how to use nonprofits illegally. They know it’s hardly a handout when a foundation, corporation or individual wishes to be philanthropic, though they won’t admit it. But they’ll always, always, always call it a handout when it comes to the use of taxpayer money. Which, by definition, politicizes the use of public money for the arts. They’re not guaranteed to win that or any other argument if our advocacy is better or stronger or, well, merely alive. But because it’s lame, pathetic and for the most part invisible, they do win the argument. It’s our fault, not theirs.

You write that “no Million-Artist March will change anything if their core political issue is theatre against ‘handouts’ they don’t like,” I say to you, Doug, that if that were the case, Marian Anderson would never have sung at the Lincoln Memorial and Martin Luther King, Jr. would never have told us of his dream. I reject with every fiber of my being the idea that hundreds of thousands of people on the Mall doing anything, for any reason, at any time, means nothing. It’s always important — it’s essential to our democracy. To argue to any degree otherwise is nihilistic and passive and defeatist, which is the opposite of what I thought you were preaching. It’s a catastrophic and pathetic failure to imagine, to think big, to dare to dream. You want messy and yet this very idea, messy by nature, you reject? No: If nihilism and defeatism is to be our default, then why are we even talking about this? We can do better.

Leonard: Sorry for the delay in responding – I was traveling yesterday. And sorry if I gave the impression that I think the NEA is a lobbying agency. Certainly it isn’t. No, my original post was in response to the Americans for the Arts Action Fund PAC lobbying scorecard and they are a lobbying group.

As for an “idea” to rally behind, I would concur that art “works” is fairly lame. Inspiring? No. And it doesn’t really mean anything. That is actually my point. Let’s say, for example, that we say the vision is that the arts create vibrant cultures, that it expresses communities or identity. That’s still not enough. By messy, I actually meant that the arts are messy and affect people and communities in many personal ways. One of the problems I think is that we insist on thinking that “the arts” are a real thing. In reality they’re many things, often many conflicting things. Messy things. So maybe one of the difficulties is that in trying to encompass it all in a single description we dilute it all.

What I’m suggesting is that there are many arguments for the arts. There are many inspiring things about the arts. Why are we arguing for the general (which doesn’t mean much) when maybe we should be arguing for the specific?

As for the existence of the NEA and whether it should go away – the NEA does a lot of great things, from support to the field, to encouragement to data. And even though it has a small budget, it at least provides an advocate for the arts in the government, no matter how effective. I’d hate to give it up. The NEA is a great idea. But as I said earlier, I wonder if the fights to preserve funding for the NEA haven’t just become a distraction that isn’t worth it. Perhaps it’s time to have an arts-wide debate about the NEA and its role. In the age of community-building, maybe it would be useful to have a discussion about what the NEA should be doing.

Not sure I agree with your take on handouts. I think the right will always characterize direct funding to things like the arts, education etc as handouts. But tax breaks and subsidies – for sugar or oil or manufacturing or whatever – they think of as business incentives rather than handouts. The fact that these handouts of billions of dollars cost taxpayers and enrich business interests is of no interest to them. But it seems to infuriate when programs that actually benefit the greater good get direct funding, even when, in the case of some of them, like the arts, generate social and positive economic impact. So maybe the arts ought to go the way of business and get their subsidies and incentives like business does. This route certainly seems more lucrative. We partially have this already – forgiveness of admission taxes in some cities and states, charitable deductions and some non-profit benefits. We don’t hear the right argue against the existence of 501 C3’s because they have them too. So maybe there’s something in how sugar subsidies work that might be adopted by the arts?

Okay this is getting long, so I’ll jump to the million artist march. No question that civil rights marches made an impact. And demonstrations have been an effective way of pushing political action. But I wonder if they’re still effective. You say: “I reject with every fiber of my being the idea that hundreds of thousands of people on the Mall doing anything, for any reason, at any time, means nothing. It’s always important — it’s essential to our democracy.” I wonder. I’ve seen a lot of big demonstrations in recent years that haven’t really resulted in much. In a digital age in which millions sign petitions and the cacophony of protest is loud, I wonder if the traditional march is effective. Just as fax machines devalued letters to legislators and email and online polls were delegitimized by motivated hyper-partisans.

And what would the idea be that would motivate a million artists to march? If, as you say, it’s difficult to discern a good idea in the NEA’s advocacy for the arts.

The motivation? That people — sorry — are stronger together. I don’t have to have every jot and tittle of the march figured out, especially as people with far more power and resources than I have can make this happen if they actually have some guts. This isn’t about the NEA. This is about the nation. I can’t put it better than that.

And hey, if it doesn’t happen, don’t expect change, don’t expect any difference at all. Only expect that we’re intellectually farting in the wind as it blows in every direction but ours.

You should not leave out of the argument the fact that the Republicans in Congress have been dedicated for the past 8 years (at least) to crippling, even dismantling, the federal government. Often they have succeeded, even when it might seem that they have lost the battle. Why should we think we can persuade them to spend money on the arts when they won’t spend money on roads and bridges and efforts to fight diseases like the zika virus? Just this week we saw a battle over funds to help the people of Flint that nearly led to a government shutdown. Many on the right would have welcomed a shutdown. I see no chance whatsoever for additional funds for the arts coming from Washington.

“As long as the argument for the arts is just about conserving NEA/NEH budgets, it’s not going to inspire anyone… But then why pretend to lobby? Why pretend the arts are important if you can’t articulate why?”

Its first woman president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has made it her mission since arriving in 2007 to make arts and humanities equally as important as Harvard’s STEM programs; and with a new emphasis in the life sciences across the university as well as the departments involved.

I have been writing about learning in museums and the neurobiology of our visual perception for more than a decade. Here’s a quote from my piece in February on the different modes of learning between reading/math vs. art/image, while commenting on Harvard’s new admissions policy:

“Alpha-numeric knowledge is linear – A to Z, Zero to Infinity. And from what we now know in neurobiology, it is processed consciously in certain areas of the brain; but it can become unconscious and automatic with practice. It is linear and vertical in that you must start with A to get to Z, arithmetic to calculus. What is non-alpha-numeric knowledge? It is knowledge transmitted horizontally by information contained in images – with multiple entry points and accessible equally to kindergartners and university professors. Images are received in our eyes and perceived in the brain, where the information is broadcast widely to different areas: the unconscious and the conscious; the immediate muscle-response and the delayed-analysis; the ego-centric and the allo-centric (things as each relates to me vs. to one another). Good art, via largely images, teaches us to see things from multiple points of view in addition to our own. Good art teaches us to think in others’ places.”

So we do have an argument for art – now we have to prove it by practicing and experimenting with it.

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

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